White Alvin Alley
Ok, so totally post dated post. But like two or three weeks ago, I went to see Alvin Alley. A family friend Dwana is like the big badass in the troupe. She's the bald headed sis in the video below. But anyway, so I go and I'm all prepped to see some black people do some black choreographed moves. So why then do I see like five, I swear I'm not lying, Five white chicks? Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with white people dancing, but in the premiere, fuck the dumb shit, the only major black dance ensemble? And not like one octoroon rocking it in the back, I'm talking five full on Caucasoid dancing Revelations.
This goes back to this thing me and my cousin always talk about. I swear that in five years everyone is going to say that Filipino kids invented break dancing and djing. Why? Cause black people as a whole don't claim our cultural products. Freaking integration has tweaked the black consciousness to such a degree that were more concerned with assimilating than holding on to cultural products that exemplify our history and our struggles. Hardcore rappers are in such a rush to be thought of as successful that they take the most readily accessible status symbols they can find, Ice, booze, and beamers, and bitches. All of which can be bought for the price of our culture. Sadly there's a conflation in the minds of many black people today that see these trappings as their cultural legacy. While I'm not one of the "backpack to the club crew", I confess to empathizing more with their anti-capitalist stance, than with T-Pain and his love for the stripper (Though I really do like that song). In the end I feel the commodification of black culture becoming more and more self evident as fewer and fewer black people are willing to be unpopular and truly outlandish. I don't see this as a political issue, but rather a cultural one. But who knows, maybe Afrogeeks as the ability to be the vanguard of some new type of hybrid negritude that defies commodification but isn't rooted in some b.s retro 60's jargon. Stranger things have happened, right?
“I’m asking if ya’ll feel me and the crowd left me stranded…” Talib
This goes back to this thing me and my cousin always talk about. I swear that in five years everyone is going to say that Filipino kids invented break dancing and djing. Why? Cause black people as a whole don't claim our cultural products. Freaking integration has tweaked the black consciousness to such a degree that were more concerned with assimilating than holding on to cultural products that exemplify our history and our struggles. Hardcore rappers are in such a rush to be thought of as successful that they take the most readily accessible status symbols they can find, Ice, booze, and beamers, and bitches. All of which can be bought for the price of our culture. Sadly there's a conflation in the minds of many black people today that see these trappings as their cultural legacy. While I'm not one of the "backpack to the club crew", I confess to empathizing more with their anti-capitalist stance, than with T-Pain and his love for the stripper (Though I really do like that song). In the end I feel the commodification of black culture becoming more and more self evident as fewer and fewer black people are willing to be unpopular and truly outlandish. I don't see this as a political issue, but rather a cultural one. But who knows, maybe Afrogeeks as the ability to be the vanguard of some new type of hybrid negritude that defies commodification but isn't rooted in some b.s retro 60's jargon. Stranger things have happened, right?
“I’m asking if ya’ll feel me and the crowd left me stranded…” Talib
posted by afrogeek at 9:42 PM
1 Comments:
Amen!
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